Why Your Mind Shuts Down To Survive

I took myself to the sea, the ocean, 'cause that's where I was brought up, and that was my safe place.

Listen to where she goes, the ocean.

She's not at the ocean.

She's 15 years old, locked in a house in another country, married to a man twice her age that she never agreed to marry, and he's raping her, and in that moment she takes herself to the sea, not the room.

She can't leave the room.

The gates are locked.

There's no phone.

There is nowhere to run.

So she leaves the only way she can, she leaves her body.

Let's talk about what that is, because it matters.

When something horrific is happening to you and you can't fight it and you can't run from it, your brain has one option left.

It disconnects you from it.

Think of it like a switch.

When the pain is too big to survive while you're fully awake for it, the brain flips the switch and pulls you out.

It numbs the feeling.

It puts distance between you and your own body.

So the thing happening to you is happening, but over there to that girl, not to you.

That's disassociation.

Your mind leaves, but your body can't, and here's what I really want you to understand.

This is not a choice.

She didn't sit there and decide, "I'll picture the ocean now." Her brain did that for her automatically, the same way you pull your hand off a hot stove before you even thought about it.

It's a survival reflex, one of the strongest ones we have.

So when people hear a story like this and think, "How could she just lie there? Why didn't she fight?" They're asking the wrong question.

Fighting wasn't safe.

Running wasn't possible, so her brain did the one thing that was left.